Re: Not great news for youngsters
A few things, I am more Gen Jones - between boomer and X, DB pensions are fine providing the company does not collapse and you end up with around half of what you were expecting. I bought in 1991 and the mortgage was a little over half my take home pay, granted the actual sum was lower at 3x my gross pay, but by no means was it cheap.
Yes, I did get a partial student grant, but that was when quite a small proportion of school leavers went to university, the push to get 50% or more in higher education is what stopped that. The loans only have to be paid if you get a well enough paid job to do so and they time out eventually if you have not had a very well paid job to clear them.
I'd say the expansion of the internet and social meadia has made it much easier for people to create new businesses now, if you can reach a large enough audience it is amazing what kind of trivial rubbish they will buy. The lad that made a load of money selling car tax reminder discs for example, he reinvested in land, good on him. It is possible to find new things to sell all of the time, the ease of prototyping even physical goods given 3D printing and custom circuit board suppliers has never been better.
Yes, financially it can be tough for some of the younger generations, but many of the 30 - 40 year olds I work with have bought houses, have families and are doing OK and I don't work in a city pay rate business. Just look at the lifestyle we have now, a portable communications and information device in our pockets, the range of foods, activities and convenience equipment, the advances in medicine, the ease with which we can travel. The last twenty five years has been totally different from the twenty five previous to that in which we grew up and had to begin work in.
You want to go back to when there were two or three channels on the TV, pay phone up the road, a take away was fish and chips, the local library was the only place to find out about anything your parents or teachers did not know, cancer was a death sentence, cars needed fettling to start in winter and you never went very far without spares and tools, putting shillings in the gas and electricity meters, coal fires?
Life has never been that easy, just the difficulties and opportunities have changed and evolved over time. The younger generations should embrace and be proud of the modern world with all of the complex interconnectedness and awarness they are living in and creating. To me it is the science fiction I read in school come to life.